When examining an object in the case of which an image generated by an imaging device is evaluated, the treating doctor must know which component of the object is displayed in the image.
Thus, during the examination of, for example, vertebral bodies of a patient it is necessary to assign an image, generated by a computed tomography device or by a magnetic resonance device, in the form of a slice image or volume image to that vertebral body of the patient being imaged in the image. Such an assignment is possible only with great difficulty solely on the basis of the image in which the examination area is shown in detail. The assignment between the vertebral bodies and the image is therefore generally performed with the assistance of an overview image in which a much larger anatomical context of the examination area can be seen.
Such overview images are generated in the form of topograms in the case of an imaging device in the form of a computed tomography device. The assignment of a vertebral body to the image is performed by virtue of the fact that all the vertebral bodies are firstly identified in the overview image by a visual consideration of the anatomical context. The operator subsequently transmits the information relating to the identified vertebral body into a comments field in the generated image.
Because there is a high risk of vertebral bodies being confused, it is necessary for the purpose of unambiguous identification in the topogram always to have the first cervical vertebral body or the last lumbar vertebral body depicted in the topogram such that it is possible to number the vertebral bodies. If the topogram is not stored with the image or is changed, for example owing to a change in the image resolution or a change in the image section, it is no longer possible to assign the image reliably to a vertebral body.